Here at Netizen, we’ve blogged a lot over the past year about the value veterans bring to the table for any startup. We are proudly veteran owned and have a staff comprised of incredibly dedicated, talented employees of which over 80% are veterans of various branches, occupational specialties, ages and backgrounds. It is this aspect that we have attributed to much of our early success, and I’ll explain why.

In technology, especially information security, we all must continuously grow and learn to keep pace with the market and technological changes. No one knows this better than a military veteran. In the service, we are forced to constantly adapt to and overcome even the most seemingly insurmountable of obstacles on a daily basis. Education and training are a part of the core military lifestyle and most veterans bear this intense desire to constantly learn and adapt long after their service ends. It is a set of attributes which cannot be taught, but which must be lived in order to learn.

Veterans bring values of loyalty, dedication and honesty. In a world replete with fraud, waste and abuse, veterans are a unique breed of driven individuals that put the team first. Never leave a client unsatisfied, never leave a job poorly done, and never let your teammates down. In a cutthroat, individualist society these people tend to be relationship and mission driven. This has proven to be a cultural requirement for long term results instead of constantly chasing shortsighted gains at the expense of future stability.

There is also so much more to the military service than the labels of simple occupational specialties which the civilian world attempts to categorize them by. There are skills such as leadership, discipline, teamwork and other ethical values which cannot simply be learned in a classroom. These are skills sorely lacking in the corporate world, but abundant in the veteran community. The problem is, veterans are rarely given the chance to prove themselves because corporate recruiters, due to a complete lack of understanding, look no further than the veteran’s occupational specialty.

Point is, regardless if the servicemember was an aircraft mechanic or an infantry scout, there are skills well beyond those simple titles that are hard to quantify but critical to startup and corporate success. So, give a veteran a chance and your business will reap greater success because of it, as studies have repeatedly shown [link 1 link 2 link 3 link 4].